[cutterjohn42]

Hello,

I've been reading e-texts since I purchased my first Palm IIIx in the spring of 1998, and rapidly discovered CSpotRun. Following this I found the sitescooper app, and had that running on one of my linux machines and was using the IIIx to read scraped websites as well as e-books. (Eventually moved to iSilo, and then plucker for the more "featured" reading capabilities, e.g. following links.)

At some point during this time I found Peanut Press, which had an interesting collection of fiction for me, so I ended up buying a bunch of books from them and using their reader sw as well.

I've also tried various other Palms(color), Newton MessagePad 2100(PITA to put content on), and wince(yes I do) color devices but did not care for any of them.

Bought a Franklin EBM-911 in 2000, and liked that because it was mono, had a semi-useable backlight, and slightly higher resolution. Plus mobireader was halfway decent.

Found the REB-1100 in 2002 for c. $100 and bought one of those and used it until it died a year or so ago(doesn't boot, white screen only). I really liked that one as it was monochrom(good for outdoor use), and had a VERY good backlight.

Went back to my Palm IIIx/EBM-911 combo(bad cap so the EBM loses content every time that I have to change batts PITA), and so have decided to look at the new devices.

Looked at the fictionwise REB-1150 rebadge. Still don't like the OS, and from prior experience doubt it's "robustness".

Looked at Kindle, but killed it as a) it's fugly, b) it's expensive(v. the REB-1100 for not having any really useful additional features or IOW feature loss overall), and c) does NOT support local user content additions.

Was pointed to bebook.com, but found out here that it's really Jinke company's Hanlin v3, which is sold by Astak in the US as the EZ Reader. Looks nice but lacks touchscreen and backlight. Another fairly major plus(since my crappy Compaq iPaq continuously ding batteries diasco) is an easily user replaceable battery, which these have.

Looked at the Sony's before, but again no touch screen and no real features over the REB-1100(actually more of a rollback of features, but with an increased cost). Then Sony released the PRS-700BC which is more more feature comparable to the REB-1100, but it DOES have a touchscreen plus backlight and I can possibly see a working model in an actual store instead of blindly buying. A fairly major minus would be non-easily user replaceable battery.

Read about the Hanlin v9, but it sounds like it'll be too large even though it has touchscreen + backlight + WiFi(don't care). Wish their v3 update with WiFi ha touchscreen + backlight instead of WiFi.

So, this basically leaves me at either
Astak EZ Reader (Hanlin V3)
OR
Sony e-Reader PRS-700BC

So my question is any of you that had touchscreen + backlit devices, how is going to one that has neither? Do the number key letter, etc. entry work OK in the standard OS or OpenInkPot? Enough that you don't miss the touchscreen? What do you do about lighting?

Sony PRS-700BC, OK this one has all of the features, but more limite document format support and it has to be mangled into SOny's format, but then so did the REB-1100 content, and I used the CLI package for that mostly. Are these units of better build quality than typical Sony consumer grade products? (i.e. is it crappy build quality like their TVs, stereos, playstations, etc. or good like their notebooks and PDAs?)

How much of a chore is it to disassemble and replace the battery? Any ideas how long these units last before the battery needs to replaced? Are the batteries available at decent prices?

[EDIT]
One other item:
I didn't notice any dedicated page turning keys on the photos of the PRS-700BC, are there any or does Sony expect you to swipe the touch screen all of the time to turn pages? (Be best if there were keys if they were on the side like the REB-1100 or the thumb dial on the EBM-911 and other devices, sort of like what I saw on the bebook Hanlin v3 version...)
[/EDIT]